And They're Off - Seed Catalogs Already Arriving

I no sooner put down my trowel and store the lawn mower for the season than the seed catalogs begin arriving in my mailbox. It used to be you'd start getting them around Christmas, or maybe New Year's Day.  It was fun cozying up on the couch with the pile of seed catalogs while a fire crackled in the hearth and the spouse watched the Jets lose a game on a Sunday afternoon.  Now the seed catalogs are vying for space in my mailbox alongside Swiss Colony, Figis, and the usual 1,001 clothing catalogs and office supply catalogs.

The first two to arrive this week were Vermont Bean Seed (which sells more than bean seeds) and Pinetree Garden seeds. Of the two, Pinetree offers a more intriguing array of seeds. They have specialty sections for growing Italian herbs and vegetables as well as special Asian cuisine vegetables. We've been toying with the idea of growing some herbs and vegetables and trying to sell them through the farmer's market or to local restaurants, and if I ever go through with that plan, I'll turn to a catalog like this for my seeds.

I've got a few things circled already. I know I want to try to grow leeks next year.  Each year I pick several experimental vegetables to try, and 2012 shall be the year of the leek and the year of the asparagus here at Seven Oaks.  We've got a bed already prepared for them, as if they're long awaited house guests. Here's your nice bed of well rotted cow manure and peat - come on down!  I'll bring you a hot toddy of compost tea tonight, okay? 


I know why the seed companies are rushing the season.  But I've barely finished this year's garden, and now they're already enticing me with seeds for 2012!

Because Stories Aren't Stories Until They're Told

I made a bold decision this month regarding my writing, one which I hope I won't regret. I've gotten so frustrated at not finding markets for some of my fiction and essays that I've decided to self publish them.  I've published them on Hub Pages - first my short story, An Ancient Gift, and today, an essay entitled The Fox.

I wrote both stories in the early 1990s. The incident in The Fox actually took place sometime around 1989.  I've lost track of how many anthologies, literary magazines, and whatever I've submitted both works to.  Sometimes I get back notes saying "Nice but not quite us - try again" or "Keep submitting" - and although I know, based on countless books on writing I've read over the years, that these are meant to be encouraging, at this point I'm just discouraged.  Yes, I've had plenty of essays, stories and articles accepted for paid publication, but these two works I felt deep in my heart were good enough to be read by others, but I just couldn't find them a home. 

Elizabeth J. Andrew is a writer whose work I admire, and last night I finished reading her book Swinging on a Garden Gate.  One thing in the book that really struck me was that she wrote that stories aren't stories until they're told - and that sharing our stories is a gift we give others. She was talking about a pile of manuscripts that she'd lost to a fire, and she mourned their loss because now she could never share them with others.  I thought a lot about that last night. It's not as if my works are lost, but aren't they, if they're just sitting on the computer? It's unlikely a new print publication is going to launch and clamor for my type of stories. And I think I've tried every single one in the Writer's Market by now.

I'm tired of having wonderful stories stuck in limbo because there just aren't publications out there these days buying them. Traditional tales, or uplifting essays.  It seems as if every short fiction market these days wants people to write like Hemingway or have some sort of vague, quasi literary ending.  I hate stories like that. I want to be entertained when I read a story. I don't want to have to reach for my dictionary or pretend I am uber-hip because I get the nihilistic meaning of the deep thinking writer who doesn't punctuate properly.  I'm tired of bad art, bad music, and bad writing masquerading as brilliance.

So I have decided to go the way of many...self publishing. I am grateful for the internet.  It's really given control of content back to writers.  Sure, readers have to find your writing, whether you're penning a blog or a book.  But once readers find you, it's up to the READERS whether or not they like you - not one editor making decisions based on profitability.

If you like these works, please leave a comment on their pages on Hub Pages (or here if you prefer). And if you like them, I will share more.

Because a story just isn't a story until it's told...and someone like you is there to read it.

Christmas Cactus

If you've nurtured along a Christmas cactus from last year, or you're considering purchasing one to enjoy throughout the holiday season, please read my articles on the care and blooming of these gorgeous holiday plants.

• Caring for Christmas Cactus
• How to Get a Christmas Cactus to Bloom

Phaelanopsis Orchid Still Blooming Two Years Later

Almost two years to the day, and the pink phaelanopsis orchid I purchased in December 2009 continues to bloom without ceasing.  It still has the round hole in the middle of the leaf as if someone used a hole punch on it, but every time one stem finishes blooming, another appears.  I've had it in my bright, south facing office, but it is actually doing better in the cool east-facing plant room on the first floor. I water it once a week and that is it.  Everyone always told me that orchids were fussy, difficult plants. Not this one.  If you look very closely at the photo, you can see the beginning of yet another flower stem appearing under the old one.  I love this flowering houseplant and for a $2 bargain plant from the sale rack at Lowe's, it has been a wonderful houseplant!

I hope your Thanksgiving was great. I spent the day curled up in the living room recliner reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett.  I loved it and recommend it if you are looking for a good novel with very engaging, real characters. I like books like this but they are so hard to find. The last book I read that was similar to this in how I was drawn into the characters was John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meaney, an older book that I checked out of the library in August.  After reading how the author struggled to get The Help published (I think I read that she received 65 rejections before an acceptance for publication, and she spent over five years working on it) I am feeling bolder about my own literary efforts. I write for a living, but writing sales and marketing copy and informative non fiction is so different from writing fiction and creative non fiction. I want to write a story that makes a difference but I lose heart so easily.  When I read about other authors' struggles, I feel better and not so alone. It makes me realize that writing rarely comes easily for anyone - and that for most of us, writing something of quality takes work.

So today is is back to work, albeit with some breaks in the schedule to finish planting bulbs.  I still have over 100 daffodils left in the garage that must get into the ground over the next week before the ground finally freezes solid. I tackled planting the tulip bulbs yesterday - 50 "Easter Joy" mixed pastels to add to the pink pastel tulips in the backyard planted near the deck (to avoid deer.)  Luckily for us, the weather looks like it will hold out and remain warm and sunny during the day, so I can get out there and get a few more bulbs in each day!

Raz got his sutures out this Wednesday and his infected leg healed up fine. He's very full of himself now that he has gained some weight. He was screaming to get out of his bedroom this morning and go for his daily excursion around the house!  I gave him a green stuffed mouse to play with and boy, he must be a great hunter of real mice.  He really played with that thing until I thought he would pop it the way Shadow does with the stuffed mice. She likes nothing better than stealing the cat toys and giving them one gigantic CHOMP in her massive German shepherd jaws, then dropping the remains of the popped mouse toy in front of the cats as if to say innocently, "What? I was just helping you!"

"Get away from my new toy, dog."

"What? I'm not supposed to pop the cat toys?"

Master Gardener Program

Just a quick note today to share some good news. I received my letter stating that I have been accepted into the Virginia Master Gardener program. I start classes in January, and through May, will be learning all sorts of interesting things. I am very excited and can't wait to share what I am leaning with you!

Broccoli and Cabbage from the Organic Vegetable Garden

We picked the last of the broccoli and cabbage from the organic vegetable garden this past Thursday. Broccoli grown without any chemicals, without any pesticides, and left until after a frost or two has touched it is an incredible taste experience. It's sweet. I know that's hard to believe, especially for you broccoli haters out there (and you're numbers are legion.)  But it's true. Even my husband and his dad, who really don't like broccoli that much, perk up when they see me bring the bowl to the table now.

"Is that garden stuff or store stuff?" they ask me, spoon poised midway between bowl and plate with one lonely floret perched aboard.

"Garden."

"Good."  The spoon dips faster and faster into the bowl, and a big pile of broccoli moves onto the plate.

Organic cabbage, nearly perfect.

The cabbage this year was an interesting experiment. One beautiful head (shown here) is nearly perfect, without insect marks, blemish or issues. It's a tight head of cabbage, crunchy and sweet.  We have red cabbage growing too but it hasn't made a head yet. I don't know much about red cabbage and this is the first year that I am growing it, so I have left it alone.  If it doesn't do anything over the next few weeks I will harvest what we have and cook it to see what it tastes like.

We picked buckets more of turnips, beautiful globes with just the right tint of regal purple near the top like trim on a king's robes, and parsnips, long and gnarly, all resting in buckets in the garage. Since the garage is chillier than the basement right now, we're just storing them there until it gets below freezing consistently.  Then we will move them to the basement area where I've stored the potatoes.

Foreground; carrots and parsnip.  In the background: turnips and second sowing of carrots.

Late harvest: broccoli, cabbage, and a surprise find of dill that self seeded among the parsnips.

This year's gardening experiment were wonderful and helped me learn even more about what to grow.  We're busy planning for next year's vegetable garden. The herbs are going to be dug up and moved out into the unprotected portion of the yard - the space not fenced in.  They're really taking up a valuable garden bed, and we moved the mint without any issue. There's plenty now growing along the edge of the woods at the bottom of the orchard for our needs.  The oregano will meet a similar fate. It also grows like a weed, so come spring I will move the oregano, the remaining catnip plant, the sage and the lemon balm out of the valuable raised bed and into the open area. If the deer nibble it, so be it.

Next, we hope to add an asparagus bed.  I want an entire bed of asparagus. If I get a pressure canning device, I will continue to grow green beans.  I'm not going to grow the heirloom beans. They really weren't all that wonderful and the production was below expectations.  I will grow sweet potatoes again, and onions and I want to try leeks. I think the asparagus and leeks are going to be my big 'experiments' for 2012, but when the Parks and Burpee catalogs come in a few weeks.....I'll probably be enticed by something else.

To anyone reading this who is thinking about trying to grow organic vegetables - do it.  Don't wait and don't think you have to know everything. One of my pet peeves is that most gardening books make organic gardening seem like something esoteric, something difficult. They make it sound like you have to have a Ph.D. in chemistry and work all day long in the garden to get a single carrot.  Not so! Nature intended plants to grow organically! If you're just growing vegetables for your family, grow them organic. So what if a bug or two nibbles it?  You don't need the vegetables to live on - you're growing them to have fun, to supplement what you buy from the store. So do it.  Don't wait.  Grow your garden in 2012!

Rain drops on red cabbage leaves.  Nature creates beauty wherever I look.

First Harvest of Parsnips

Last night for Sunday dinner, I made a roast chicken and three vegetables from the garden - fresh baked potatoes, broccoli, and parsnips. Parsnips are a new vegetable for my family. Many years ago, I bought some at the store - a small bag, about 1 pound, for $2.99. I made a recipe out of Cooking Light. My family made faces and complained about the bitter taste. I figured that parsnips were one of those vegetables they just didn't like, and to tell you the truth, I didn't much like them either.

A short while after my failed parsnip experiment, I was away on a business trip at a large conference. It was one of those conferences where dinner is served in a hotel ballroom at round tables seating exactly 8 people. Everyone orders the rubber chicken, the burned steak, or the soggy fish, although of course they don't call it that. I ordered the rubber chicken and out it came from the kitchen served with whipped mashed potatoes and parsnips.  The best part of that meal (aside from the chocolate cups filled with vanilla cream as the desert) were the parsnips. The chef had cut them into matchsticks and sauteed them in butter. They were crunchy and sweet, with just a hint of zip.  I fell in love. I could easily have eaten an entire plate of just the parsnips and skipped the bouncy chewy chicken.

Reading about their growth and cultivation, I decided to grow them here at Seven Oaks this past year as part of my annual vegetable gardening experiments. Each year I choose a few new vegetables to try: this year, the experiment include horseradish (still underway), heirloom beans (not worth the effort), potatoes (lots of work but valuable) and parsnips.  Among the experiments, the parsnips were the very last to harvest, but worth the wait.

Parsnips always conjure up a musty image in my mind of a Victorian grandmotherly type in a long gray dress in a dusty house while a Victrola plays somewhere in the background. They really aren't in fashion, are they?  Kind of like the humble turnip, or a cabbage.  Perhaps in the south they are more popular than in the north where I grew up, but they do have that fussy-mussy, old fashioned aura about them.  Which is a shame, because not only do they taste good, they're good for you, and at least for me, they were easy to grow.

First off, parsnips need a long growing season. Depending on the variety, that's over 100 days, sometimes 120 days or more. I planted the seeds in April and haven't touched them since.  Every book and article I have read on growing parsnips states that you must leave them in the ground until the first frost; the frost transforms the root starches into sugars and makes them sweeter.

The first frosts occurred the last week of October, but we haven't had a meal where parsnips seemed like a tasty side dish - until last night.  I made the roast chicken, baked a few garden potatoes, and steamed some fresh garden broccoli as the side dish. Then I pulled out my favorite cookbook out all, the Fanny Farmer Cookbook, which provides how to information to cook all the basic vegetables, along with a few recipes to make them interesting. It was from Fanny Farmer that I learned how to cook beets and make Harvard beets, and once again the cookbook did not disappoint me on the parsnips.  Peeled, sliced, and boiled; then sauteed with butter, salt and pepper. I gave each family member a little spoonful but only told my husband what they were. If I serve him mystery food he gets annoyed with me.

The consensus was that they were delicious, and they were! The consistency was something between a potato and a carrot. The first taste was a bit like a potato too, with an aftertaste like carrots, but with a hint of something spicy there too.

According to my research, parsnips are actually related to carrots.  One thing of interest is that the ancient Greeks and Romans liked them a lot! Supposedly the foliage can exude a chemical that can burn the skin. Since I always garden wearing gloves, that's not a problem, but the books recommend harvesting them carefully while wearing long-sleeved clothing and gloves. 

I looked up parsnips last night and found that they are very good for you; high in fiber, potassium and vitamin C.  Given that they required no cultivation whatsoever, and weren't bothered by a single insect pest, I will probably plant a few again next year. All I did was sow the seeds, thin them out a little,  and nature did the rest.  What can be easier?

Parsnips - one experiment that worked this year!

Beware the Gardening Expert, Because We're All Gardening Experts

Water on cauliflower leaf in my garden

Beware the gardening expert, because in truth, we're all gardening experts - and perpetual learners.

I just finished participating in an interview for Hobby Farms magazine on seed starting. I don't know which, if any, of the information I shared from my personal experience will appear in the magazine. But it felt rather odd to be interviewed for Hobby Farms.  I first subscribed to that publication over a decade ago. I found a copy of the magazine on a newsstand in Penn Station one evening while waiting for my train; of all the places to find a hobby farming magazine, I'd put Penn Station in New York City dead last on the list, but there it was.

Hobby Farms fueled my dreams for owning my own hobby farm someday. Here I am today, being interviewed for the same publication that inspired my own dreams of living in the country. God has a great sense of humor; I always sense loving irony in the universe. I've written personal essays where I've described "my life always comes full circle" and here's another example of that - the magazine that fueled my dream is now asking me to comment so I can fuel others' dreams.  I shake my head in wonder and mingled fear. How did I suddenly become quotable? Does this mean I have to hide the dead plants when the neighbors come to visit?

I think that all gardeners are both experts and perpetual novices. For everything you learn, you discover there are a 100 new things to learn. Gardening is one of those things you just sort of learn by doing. I learn more from my mistakes than anything else. For example, my potato mistake.  I never grew potatoes before; this year, I've harvested not one but two crops.  John dug up another 20 pounds or so this past week.  Although I thought I'd harvested all of them back in July, clearly I missed some little spuds, and they decided they knew better than me and flourished, producing a bumper crop.  I got some tips from my neighbor Mel, who gave me the original batch of seed potatoes, a bag of sulfur, and some advice, but it's really been trial and error.  I have a feeling I'm going to be digging potatoes from that bed for a long time to come. 

The first year I moved to Virginia I read in some 'expert' book that cabbage could be planted in the spring here, so I raced around planting cabbage, broccoli and all the fall crops I knew from Long Island. Talk about a disaster. Well, it was a disaster for me but not for the cabbage moths, who really feasted on the sudden early spring growth of their favorite plant. I think I supplied the whole moth larvae population of south central Virginia with food that year. I remember picking a head of cabbage and dumping it in the sink, only to pick little yellow worms out of it.  Eeew!

This year, I did the smart thing; I talked to neighbors and asked them when they planted their cabbage and broccoli.  I asked one local fellow whose family has farmed these parts since the late 1700s. Now if he doesn't know the answer, nobody will.  He said plant it in the fall.  I've got beautiful heads of cabbage and broccoli ready to eat out in the garden now, and probably some annoyed insects, but tough luck - we'll eat the cabbage, thank you!

No matter what I grow, I'm always growing. Experience teaches us gardening; we garden writers and teachers just transmit the knowledge.

Checklist for Easy Fall Garden Clean Up

I just wrote this article today on Fall Garden Clean Up, providing readers with a checklist of 10 points to cover when they're cleaning up around the garden and preparing the garden for the winter. I'll a little behind this year on my own gardening tasks - we're still weeding, pruning and mulching the fruit orchard trees and planting our annual 300+ daffodils out there. I've started pulling up dead vegetable and annual flowers, and trimming back some of the perennials, but I have a feeling I'm going to be out there working until it snows! The early frost sure took a toll on the garden and got me all off-kilter.

However, I will use my own checklist to make sure I cover the important stuff.

Read the article here:  Fall Garden Clean Up Checklist